Tag Archives: Christian Bale

The Best Actor race is a tight one this year. You have fan favorites like A Star is Born. Crowd-pleasers like Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book. Transformative performances in Christian Bale and Rami Malek. And Willem Dafoe is in there, too. Because why not?

Like with Best Actress, the Oscar race for Best Actor comes in three tiers. There are the clear front-runners, sure-fire nominees. There are two or three likely nominees. And then there’s the rest, a handful of actors in the mix that could slip in last minute.

The hardest spot to predict is the last one. The fifth spot could be filled by a number of quality performances.

As he moves further from straight comedy and more toward a dark comedy examination of political America, McKay’s showy style becomes more apparent. In a way, it is more permissible to have a broad comedy film be brash and in-your-face. While such a style is not destined to fail in a more dramatic setting, it is harder to grapple with tone in that setting.

McKay’s The Big Short shows some signs of this tonal problem. Largely a depressing subject, the comedy flourishes in that retelling of the housing crisis don’t translate well. The non sequitur cutaways to celebrities are jarring and ineffective. What shines in that film are the performances, showing that the director understands the import of Continue reading Vice (2018) Movie Review→

The frontrunner appears to be Sylvester Stallone due to his recent Golden Globe win (and the fact that he got a significant amount of applause and cheers when they announced his nomination). He does turn a career-high performance in Creed, but there are other actors who could conceivably knock him down.

It’s October, which means its time to watch some horror movies. Instead of combing the rather unhelpful Netflix website to find the best selections, head to the search bar and check out these gems.

Note: this list is in absolutely no particular order. I just picked and grabbed as I perused the films that are available on Netflix.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

I’ve talked extensively about this movie in previousposts, so I’ll be brief: this movie is horror art. If you want a scream-filled gore fest, this isn’t the movie for you. But if you want horror as high cinema, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is a beauty.

Fascinating. A case study of isolation. And a case study of cinephilia that is utterly unparalleled. The power of cinema as a means of connection to the outside world and as a former of identity has never been exemplified on film in such a way as The Wolfpack presents it.